AHS: Coven Recap: Dangerous Liaisons

In this week’s American Horror Story: Coven, five (not two, four or six but five) characters get lucky, two characters’ luck runs out, and we get what could well go down in television history as the creepiest seduction ever. Read on if you dare as I eulogize “The Dead”…

SAX SELLS | Picking up more or less where their “chance” meeting last week left off, Fiona has accompanied the Axeman back to his place. Well, to someone’s place. (The corpse of the previous tenant is lying in a pool of his own blood in the tub.) But it isn’t the smooth operator’s homicidal tendencies that prompt her to call off their one-night stand, it’s the discovery that her hair is falling out. Fast. To save face and beat a hasty retreat, she disses him and then herself, saying she’s a wretched creature that he’s better off not knowing. Pshaw — “love transforms,” he argues, finally sealing the deal with an elaborate sax/sex analogy. The morning after, when Fiona again pulls away, the Axeman reveals that he’s been watching over her since she was 8. (And, given that his ghost had been trapped at Miss Robichaux’s for decades, he certainly had a bird’s-eye view.) Over time, he says — clearly not hearing how skeevy this all sounds — his interest in her went from fatherly to lustful. Curiously, Fiona doesn’t hear how skeevy this all sounds, either. She’s too focused on the fact that he saw her grow old to care about the fact that he saw her grow up. “What was this,” then, she hisses before storming out, “a mercy lay?” In her mind, their fling is clearly over. However, in the rest of her, it clearly isn’t. That night, as she’s about to buzz off her hair, a sax note stops her in her tracks, and before you can say Kenny G, the clipper’s turned off, and she’s turned on.

THREE’S ALLOWED | While FrankenKyle struggles not only with his reanimation but also with the realization that he’s comprised of all of his former frat brothers’ bits and bobs, Madison — in a particularly eloquent monologue — laments her inability to feel. Anything. (We even see her attempting to burn a reaction out of herself. Nada.) However, the starlet’s never-say-die attitude finally pays off when she lets her fellow stiff hump her against a wall. (Does it count as necrophilia if both of the participants are recently deceased?) Needless to say, Zoe is unthrilled to walk in on her bestie and her crush doing the nasty. But she has bigger cauldrons to stir. She’s just learned from Cordelia — who learned it from one of her visions — that Fiona killed Madison, and if the Supreme suspects that Zoe’s a potential successor… Well, as Cordie puts it, “If she even thinks you’re next, you’re next.” (Yikes.) The blind sorceress’ solution? Murder her mother. “Kill her once, kill her good, kill her dead.” Funny how the solution is never “group hug.” Later, wanting further proof that Fiona poses a threat, Zoe — having discovered Spalding’s enchanted tongue in her closet (yeesh!) — puts it back in his mouth and forces him to admit that Fiona, not he, slit Madison’s throat. Mission accomplished, she stabs him in the chest. (An iffy move if you ask me: She just killed the butler who would’ve cleaned up the mess!) Shortly thereafter, Madison catches Zoe getting out of the shower, and — deducing that even her killer vajayjay can’t harm the already-semi-dead Kyle — offers her gal pal a sorry-I-stole-your-would-be-boyfriend gift: a ménage à trois! So maybe a group hug sometimes IS the solution!

PAYBACK’S A BITCH | Though early on in the hour, Queenie and her slave bond over Supersized Frostop burgers, Delphine makes the mistake of suggesting that the voodoo doll will never be accepted by the other girls at Miss Robichaux’s because she’s black. “Black as coal,” to be specific. This not only makes Queenie wonder, it also makes her wander… all the way over to Marie Laveau’s. She’s welcome to join their crew, Marie says, and she should. “Voodoo doll,” she suggests, “belong in the house of voodoo.” But, of course, there’s a price: She has to bring Delphine to Marie. Unsure of whether she can go through with that, Queenie asks her frenemy what’s the worst thing she ever did. One anecdote about a slave’s slaughtered baby’s blood being used in her beauty regimen later, and boom! Queenie’s sure. So by episode’s end, it’s Delphine’s blood that Marie is applying to her own face as part of HER beauty regimen.

Okay, your turn. What did you think of the episode? I was blown away by the speech that Brad Falchuk wrote for Madison. (“Most people never get over stuff like” being gang-raped, she noted. “I was like, ‘Let’s go for Jamba Juice.’”) Really digging Fiona and the Axeman, too. So film noir! And giddy with anticipation of the Rambo style assault on Miss Robichaux’s that Hank is obviously planning… So hoping they turn ol’ Jughead into a toad! And you? Hit the comments!